Project Descriptions

Grand Prize

Frontend.com: Future Vision of Migrant Healthcare, Best System for Humanizing Healthcare on a Global Scale

Future Vision of Migrant Healthcare

Working with the UN body for migration (IOM) and student designers, we reimagined how healthcare can be provided to mobile migrants.

“Healthcare is a basic human right. However, due to the movement of migrants in Europe, aid agencies are struggling to provide that care to a connected, mobile population. With over 65 million displaced people globally, the provision of basic healthcare is a growing challenge. We worked with the United Nations’ migration body, IOM, to concept a future vision of migrant healthcare, using human-centred design.

Providing effective healthcare to migrant populations poses two key challenges: movement and communication. In the European context, many migrants are unwilling to take vital tests due to pressure to keep moving. Displaced patients have no continuous record of care as they engage with different aid agencies and healthcare systems. Furthermore, migrants come from a variety of countries, with different languages, literacy levels, and cultures.

As part of our program, we invited leading design colleges to take part in our exploration. Masters-level design students applied from across Europe, North America, South America, China and India, and ten joined us in our Dublin studio for a design-sprint bootcamp. Engaging with the migrant community, we explored needs, shared ideas, and proposed solutions to the challenges.

We explored a digital portal that’d include a cloud-based electronic health record which could be accessed through patient smartphones. This system empowers users to control and share their own health data, communicate it with healthcare professionals through a variety of languages, and allow them to receive test results, even while on the move (resolving many of the issues IOM were facing). This mobile solution can also act as a connection portal for migrants to access remote consultations with doctors and nurses, reducing dependence on national health systems and aiding care professionals to help from wherever they reside. A connected, medication labeling tool for aid workers also helps improve communication and confidence for displaced people.

UX Team on This Project

Gold Prize

Infragistics disrupted the field of Atomic Force Microscopy by re-imagining an interface used by scientists and lay people.

My colleague, Kent Eisenhuth, and I were asked by Keysight Technologies, the world’s leading electronic measurement company, to redesign the software that controlled their line of Atomic Force Microscopes.

Originally created for the scientific community, the application had a very steep learning curve that required years to master. Part of the problem was that the application presented all of the microscopes functionality, to all users, all of the time. In addition, the application was designed around the standard, multi-window, Microsoft desktop design language, meaning that completing a single task meant having a LOT of open windows.

As a result, zero percent of new users were able to successfully use the application, experienced users required years of training and powerful functionality remained hidden in plain sight.

Keysight needed to decrease training time, allow experienced users to focus on scientific research rather than learning a new interface, and open up the technology for use outside the traditional academic areas of physics and chemistry.

After an intense period of research to understand the workflows and mental models of academic users, support technicians and new, non-traditional corporate users, the redesigned application provided a solution that eliminated novice user training while simultaneously incorporating new functionality and a unique design aesthetic.

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Project Video

Live Project

UX Team on This Project

Kevin Richardson and Kent Eisenhuth

Gold Prize

Google Earth VR, Most Immersive VR Experience

Google Earth VR

Google Earth VR lets you explore the world from totally new perspectives in virtual reality.

The world has so many beautiful and amazing places to visit. If we’re lucky, we’re able to travel and see a few of them. But even the most active travelers can only see a fraction. What if we could see them all?

In 2015, our team at Google embarked on a 2-year journey to bring together the world-scale imagery of Google Earth with the depth and immersion of virtual reality. Previous versions of Earth were limited to a small viewing window, but none of them gave you the experience of being there. We wanted people to re-live memories of their childhood homes, visit places that they have never visited, and experience the world from impossible perspectives.

What made bringing a good user experience to virtual reality so hard was the sheer scale of the Earth and the lack of existing design patterns. Designing for consistency regardless of where the user is on Earth meant our solutions had to be procedural. Moving users around the virtual world induced a form of nausea called simulation sickness, so we had to invent locomotion techniques that considered human physiology. Designing 2D interfaces in a 3D world meant considering distance in addition to angular size for comfort and legibility. Finally, creating a believable and immersive environment crafting a rich ambient soundscape, playing with the right haptic vibrations, and introducing physics to interactions.

Through extensive cross-functional prototyping, cognitive walkthroughs, and usability testing of our hypotheses, we were able to create a powerful and intuitive exploration experience that appeals to both avid gamers and VR novices alike. Our insights on Earth VR have set the foundation for what makes a delightful, comfortable, and usable VR user experience and will inform future VR applications as the technology continues to mature.

Gold Prize

Bridging the ‘last mile’ on the frontline of healthcare – unlocking the identification bottleneck through human-centered design.

“Simprints, a small startup, recognized unlocking the identification bottleneck could change the lives of millions – potentially 1.5 billion one day. The low-cost biometric system uses people’s fingerprints as identification – resulting in being 228% more accurate and 4 times cheaper than other products on the market that are neither precise, affordable or mobile enough. Thousands of organizations and governments all around the world are trying to deliver these critical and essential services in education, health, and finance needed to end poverty. Instead of deploying billions of dollars towards this fight, funds are getting wasted on challenges in identification.

In order to be truly effective where others were failing, they needed a design partner to bridge this ‘last mile’ on the frontline of healthcare to ensure each and every medical interaction would deliver a tangible result. Smart Design, with a heritage of creating meaningful human-centered design solutions that have real-world impact, was the ideal partner to help tackle this. Leveraging Smart’s expertise as an inclusive design pioneer, the new partnership strived to design for extreme conditions and ensure effectiveness for everyone, from patient to health care worker.

Together, we implemented a solution that contributes to Simprints’ vision of the world as they intend it to be: where every person counts. The result is a seamless identification experience for healthcare workers and patients, now being implemented globally. After less than a year from product launch, Simprints has already reached 20k people across three different healthcare projects in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Uganda. Simprints has been tested with 125,000 fingerprints across Zambia, Benin, Nepal, and Bangladesh in urban and rural contexts. By the end of 2017, the goal is to scale up to 10 projects including education, aid distribution, and immunization, bringing the service to over 200k and scaling exponentially each year thereafter.”

Silver Prize

Echo Show from Amazon, Best Advancement in Consumer Electronics

“The next evolution of Alexa, Echo Show is an innovation in VUI + GUI interaction design. Hardware and software combine to create intuitive, voice-forward experiences. Using natural language, just as if they were talking to a friend, users can get weather conditions, find sports scores, search movie listings, call friends and family, and more. The introduction of the screen provides users with not just an audio response, but also with helpful visuals which complement the TTS.

Echo Show was launched in the U.S. in June 2017 after many months of development and design. Echo Show is a step toward ubiquitous computing and the future promise of Alexa. Alexa is a personal assistant, but also a persona. Many customers provide feedback that she is a part of the household and speak to her as if she is a person.

As a device designed for communal household use, Echo Show provides a valuable piece of the puzzle for Alexa to become a true part of the home. Users do not need to download and manage apps or files, learn a new piece of technology, or go through complex setup. They simply use their voice to perform valuable household management tasks—including turning on or off smart home devices, managing calendars, and lists, and viewing photos using native experiences.

“Anytime you see a touchscreen, you also usually also see an entire operating system and an app store that goes with it. But that’s not true of the Echo Show, which smartly relegates the screen to secondary importance.” – The Verge (6/26/17)”

UX Team on This Project

Silver Prize

Daydream Elements is a collection of tech demos that showcase principles and best practices for developing high-quality VR experiences.

“VR is an entirely new 3D medium. Creating immersive and interactive VR experiences introduces a new set of physiological, ergonomic, and technical challenges, and in the rapidly changing landscape of VR development, the industry is still just beginning to create a consistent, shared language for immersive interactions. How does a user move comfortably in VR? How do they interact with the world?

Elements is a collection of tested solutions that showcase best practices for immersive VR design. Each Element is presented as an interactive design lesson that is available both as a set of experiential demos on the Play Store and as an open source project, so that developers can quickly and easily leverage these design patterns in their own projects.

The team that works on Elements is the same team that builds our developer platforms and provides direct engineering support to Daydream developers. To decide what interactions to include, our team dove deeply into existing apps and worked closely with many struggling developers to understand how common design challenges have been solved and which problems are still looking for a solution. Next, we prototyped ideas while testing them both in-house and with third-party developers to get a sense of what was working.

The work of Daydream Elements has already started influencing mobile VR apps. One example is the popular Daydream game “Eclipse – Edge of Light”. Eclipse uses the tunneling effect to reduce the risk of simulator sickness, which works by limiting rapid motion around the outer perimeter of the user’s field of view as they’re moving around the world.

Daydream Elements is not intended to simply prescribe to developers how they must build their experiences. Rather, it is meant to reflect the best practices of VR design that are evolving over time and provide an opportunity for developers to learn and use those best practices.”

Silver Prize

Using technology to put a museum’s collection in the hands of visitors.

“In October 2016, ARoS Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark unveiled ARoS Public, a reinvention of the art museum experience as an innovative public forum for learning and interpretation. The ARoS team challenged Local Projects to create interactive installations that would transform an entire floor of the museum into a “mental fitness center,” by engaging visitors’ senses, stimulating their imaginations, and creating new forms of social connection around art.

The result is ARoS Public, a community forum containing new workshops, an artist-in-residence studio, a salon, and three digital interactive exhibits developed by Local Projects: The Art of Creativity, The Art of Commentary, and The Art of Looking.

The Art of Creativity, also called “The Portrait Machine,” asks visitors to play the role of artist or muse, by using existing artworks to make their own. Visitors can assume the role of artist or muse. The muse’s challenge is to match a pose on the screen, which is tracked and scored by a spatial camera in real time. The artist then selects art from the museum’s collection and maps selected art pieces on top of the model’s portrait.

The Art of Commentary, also called “The Commentary Box,” records conversations between two visitors, revealing individual connections to works of art. Each pair chooses an artwork and is presented with a question to provoke humor, conversation, and personal anecdotes. Their comments are recorded while natural language processing pulls out keywords from their discussion. Visitors leave with their own unique GIF combining keywords and photos of their conversation, the perfect shareable memento of their trip to ARoS Public.

The Art of Looking, also known as “The Eye Catcher,” gives visitors the opportunity to challenge their attention spans by focusing deeply on a single work of art, and to discover insights about how people look at art. Using eye-tracking technology over 20 years in the making, this interactive traces the movement of visitor”

UX Team on This Project

Bronze Prize

SuperHero is the reimagining of a sales acceleration system that empowers reps to make connections with leads quickly and effectively.

“DesignMap partnered with InsideSales to transform their suite of high volume sales development products from Salesforce modules into a full SaaS offering. The project was driven by user research across multiple sales roles and ranged from small to enterprise companies. With this research, we developed personas that guided the end-to-end proof of concept for the next generation sales development product experience. Starting with scenarios, user flows, and models that we developed with the product team, we sketched a wide range of concepts to target our primary persona’s day-to-day work. Our primary goal was to help them do their job’s more efficiently, and to help make their repetitive tasks feel rewarding.

Once we settled on a core concept, we generated wireframes to flesh out the interaction details, then brought it all into visual design. Working with an engineer, we produced a working prototype that allowed stakeholders to walk through the new design in full. The work culminated in what was announced and demoed at Accelerate ’16 in Park City, Utah as Superhero.”

Live Project

UX Team on This Project

Bronze Prize

Taiste: perTunes: Musiclock, Best Interactive Learning App

Musiclock disrupts the ways in which music theory is traditionally taught by presenting a new revolutionary way of learning scales.

Many aspiring musicians feel overwhelmed and intimidated by music theory and scales. Musiclock offers a new, revolutionary method for learning them in a simple, engaging and fun way.

The application is based on the idea by young Perttu Pölönen, who won the first price at the 2013 European Union Contest for Young Scientists and was also named the most creative Finn at the 2014 Slush startup event. Together with his brother, Pölönen started a company around his invention. The brothers joined forces with seed investor company Koppicatch, and after careful consideration, Taiste was chosen to design and develop the application – the product had previously existed as a physical prototype only.

The design challenge was to turn the brilliant idea into a digital experience that would maintain the simplicity and elegance of the original concept. We did this by creating a UI that consists of not only the playable clock itself but also features an interactive keyboard that highlights the notes that belong to the scale currently on display. The user can also transpose the backing tracks in real time to any scale she wants to practice.

The visual style of the UI was built around the idea of finding fitting colors to represent the mood of different scales: for example, selecting the Major scale turns the dominant colour to cheery yellow whereas the Blues scale is – surprise surprise – blue.

Building the basic mechanics of the clock, keyboard, and backing tracks required a deep understanding of music theory from the developer. That is part of the reason why we felt the project was such a perfect fit for us: all our team members happened to be either musicians or music enthusiasts themselves.”

Bronze Prize

Climate Change Reimagined was an interactive & immersive exhibition at the World Government Summit in Dubai, UAE.

“The Museum of the Future: Climate Change Re imagined marks the fourth year international design firm Tellart, in partnership with the Dubai Future Foundation and the UAE Prime Minister’s Office, have opened the exhibition at the annual World Government Summit in Dubai. The latest edition of the Museum of the Future addresses the reality of climate change. It presents a future where we have not only survived the challenges of climate change in the mid-21 st century but have thrived. The exhibit underlines the inevitability of major environmental change and the importance of adapting proactively. It proposes three new ideas for how we can deal with the consequences of climate change, unveiling imaginative approaches for how countries can adapt to climate change and lead the future.

This year, the exhibition is set in 2050 and explores a future where society has not only survived the challenges of climate change but reversed the devastating impacts and even thrived, offering life-enhancing solutions for all of humanity. Widely-acknowledged consensus shows that global warming poses a grave and urgent threat to humanity, perhaps most clearly articulated in the disturbing level of temperature increase known by scientists as the “human extinction threshold”. During development, Tellart and the Dubai Future Foundation collaborated with climate change experts to understand and characterize the difficult challenges that lie ahead. The resulting exhibition re-imagines the three biggest factors contributing to humanity’s ecological footprint – global industry, agriculture, and urbanism – as a means to radically innovate the way we live on Earth.

By considering this innovation as an exciting economic opportunity, the exhibition transformed our future towards one of sustainability, adaptability, and resilience while at the same time addressing the three basic human needs of food, shelter, and water.”

Honorable Mention

STEPS Forwards is an online education platform designed for US physicians to help transform their practices.

The Problem

In response to a rapidly changing healthcare environment and growing “physician burnout,” the American Medical Association (AMA) created a series of online educational modules that address common practice challenges. However, physicians and practice owners are presented with huge amounts of information daily – how can we create an experience that cuts through the noise, enabling physicians to leverage this content to address their practice challenges?

The Solution

STEPS Forward™ is an online learning experience that is designed specifically for busy physicians. The trustworthiness of the content is conveyed by affiliation with the AMA and other contributing academic organizations. Modules are categorized and easily sortable. The site even includes a recommendation engine to surface modules based on practical need. The specific benefits of each module are summarized clearly at the top of the module page, with several modules including interactive calculators allowing physicians to easily understand how much time and money the module will save their practice, a feature born out of research findings.The online module content is made digestible through the use of short content bursts, bulleted lists, video, subtle animations and diagram interactivity.

The Results

The site has a 32.5% bounce rate (well below industry average) and a high module engagement level of 69%. Most notable, however, is the 86% of participants who have indicated they are likely to implement STEPS Forward™ learnings, directly supporting the core goal of the initiative.

Physicians who already have engaged in the practice transformation series are also reporting positive changes as a result of this initiative.

“Before, there wasn’t enough time in the office visit to get it all done,” one physician said.

Another physician noted that using these solutions has led to a rediscovery of the “beauty of reconnecting with my patients.”

Live Project

UX Team on This Project

Honorable Mention

Springshot Mission Workflow, Best Interaction Design for Team Collaboration

Springshot Mission Workflow

A mobile app enabling workers to receive and perform tasks while providing insights on performance.

“Springshot is a mobile platform for assigning teams to efficiently complete tasks. Our mobile users are generally blue collar workers in the airline industry performing a variety of jobs including airplane cleaning, catering, and baggage handling. Our previous app was not intuitive for these users, and so we have designed the new mission workflow to better enable users to see what they’re assigned to do, when and where they’re assigned to do it, and key information to help them perform the job effectively.

The app also provides real-time information that might not be available otherwise. For example: without the app, a team assigned to clean a flight at Gate A1 would have no way of knowing if that flight changes gates. Our app provides this information as it becomes available, improving overall efficiency. The app tracks the user’s location along with pre-set geo-fences so that they know when they’ve arrived at the right worksite. We also provide our users with an XP system, rewarding them for and giving their managers visibility into a job well done. This increases worker engagement and pride, and in turn, results in greater productivity.

We import real-time flight feeds from our airline partners, match them with mission configurations based on customized business rules, and through artificial intelligence automatically generate missions for users that match each company’s operations. These services power the app in the background while keeping the user’s workflow simple.”

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Honorable Mention

University of Washington: Smart Bins, A Simple User-Centered Solution to a Complex Environmental Problem

Smart Bins

Smart Bins solve the always challenging problem of not knowing where to put your trash—does it go in the compost, recycle or landfill?

Sorting garbage into compost, recycling or landfill can be a surprisingly difficult task. To help University of Washington students with this problem, the Smart Bins installation features separate receptacles, each fitted with a scale, a microcomputer and a digital screen.

When in use, the digital screens show how much money is saved by proper composting and recycling and the hypothetical campus-wide savings if everyone did the same; when not in use, the screens show correctly sorted trash items cascading into each bin.

For the 10 to 40 people per hour who have used Smart Bins since it launched at a UW campus café, throwing out garbage has become fun.

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Honorable Mention

SAP Labs, Inc.: San Francisco Bay Area Super Bowl 50 Host Committee: Enhancing the Fan Village Experience, Most Insightful Insights and Actions from User Research

Enhancing the Fan Village Experience

Digital Player Cards & a 50’ Fan Wall created an immersive fan experience that bridged the physical and digital for the 50th NFL Super Bowl.

In February of 2016, the San Francisco Bay Area hosted the 50th NFL Super Bowl. To commemorate this milestone, the Host Committee created Super Bowl City: a week-long, free-to-the-public fan village that would engage the entire community in the celebration beyond the 70,000 lucky enough to go the game. The centerpiece was SAP’s Fan Energy Zone, featuring three futuristic video games developed exclusively for Super Bowl City using virtual reality and motion capture technology. Our challenge was to design a fan’s end-to-end journey with the event, uniting the standalone games through a holistic, integrated Fan Energy Zone experience worthy of the occasion.

To tie the games together we developed a digital playing card and fan leaderboard, creating an immersive ecosystem within Super Bowl City that spanned the physical and digital realms. After playing any of the games, fans would receive a digital player card in their Super Bowl City app that captured their stats and provided insights into their performance. The front of the card featured their favorite team and beautifully commemorated their participation in the festivities around Super Bowl 50. The back contextualized their performance against that of the other players and identified areas of improvement for each game. The stats being collected were then visualized on the 50-foot display overlooking the event’s central plaza. We maximized the number of these ‘hero moments’ through geographic and time-limited leaderboards, and compared the performances of each fanbase to make participants feel like representatives of their favorite teams.

Over the course of Super Bowl week, 1.1 million visitors to the area played 17,629 game sessions. While much attention is showered on the football game’s players, at Super Bowl 50, fans could also see their names in flashing lights, and commemorate their participation in the cultural moment.

UX Team on This Project

Honorable Mention

A load management system for tracking and communication between drivers, carriers, and transportation professionals.

“The trucking industry in the U.S. is massive, involving an estimated annual revenue of over $200 billion and employing about 9 million truck drivers, carriers, and logistics professionals. All of them know about a looming date: December 16, 2017. On this day a federal rule will come into effect requiring all truck operators to have electronic logging devices in place of paper logging to track driver on/off times.

For larger trucking companies this date typically has less impact. But about 97% of trucking companies operate 20 trucks or less, and many of those companies are challenged with a transition to a more digital platform after years of paper-based management. The new eLogging systems will provide some of the needed functionality, but still have limitations – the devices themselves cannot be taken out of the truck and therefore, the information within them can’t be easily taken from truck to warehouse.

With a focus on these smaller companies, logistics management company Echo set out to create a complementary digital system that provides their carriers with tools to more easily communicate load details, tracking and status, and to collect and share the supporting documentation required by the federal government. Echo’s system has a desktop web component for carriers, and a mobile app for drivers. Each component has been designed to take into account the work context and needs for their respective users, and allow all three parties – drivers, carriers, and logistics professionals – to see and communicate about load status and related information in a streamlined and visual user interface. The goals are to increase visibility for customers and load managers, as well as efficiency and speed of payment for carriers and their drivers.”

The cloud-based Cato Management Application enables our customers to quickly troubleshoot any network or security incidents and configure all network access and security policies. Customers get an end to end visibility on the network usage by user and application, identify resource abuse, and behaviors that can put the network at risk. Our customers are enterprises with multiple locations (sites, hybrid data centers, and mobile users) from all sizes.

The Cato Management Application was designed to simplify the way companies manage their network and security policies. From the start, we looked at our customers’ requirements, the persona who will be using the system, best practices, and other products in the field and implemented a simpler, intuitive, and effective applications. People on our team have vast experience in building enterprise grade and complex products, with the Cato Management Application, we decided not to do what other similar products do, and build a completely new user experience that allows anyone (experienced or not) to manage a complex enterprise network and security environment.

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Top Rated by Public Vote

GE Transportation Innovation Lab

GE Transportation Innovation Lab

Harmonizing the quantitative tools of business strategy and the qualitative skills of design.

We have reimagined innovation velocity by infusing user-centered design thinking into the innovation cycle to provide rich insights that validate our business strategy in real time. Through this approach, we are able to leverage the quantitative tools that have been built up over centuries in business and apply them to the qualitative skills of design thinking for an increased success-to-failure ratio.

To bring this vision to life, we assembled the Innovation Lab with three complementary parts comprised of a physical space, a digital portal, and cross-functional team. In the physical space, we co-create proof-of-concepts with our customers and users for an enhanced user experience. The digital portal allows any employee to pitch an idea that can be promoted by our executive leadership and explored by our cross-functional innovation team.

We validate our ideas by walking industry conference floors, organize design critiques and ideation sessions, and run usability test in the field and more until we have a level of design and experience that we are proud of. From start to finish our efforts range from rapid concepts that support sales conversations up to multi-month proof-of-concepts that feel real and have been validated as scalable solutions in our global industry that is steeped in history and nostalgia.

Overall Winner in Public Voting

modmed Kiosk will eliminate paperwork and enhance the patient intake experience at a physician’s office.

Modernizing Medicine’s patient kiosk, modmed Kiosk, is a native iPad application, designed for patients to perform self-service tasks, such as completing patient intake forms, at the doctor’s office. The antiquated intake process of filling out paper forms is a burden on both the patient and the practice. It is a confusing, stressful and error-prone experience that hasn’t changed in over 50 years. The patient intake process offers a valuable opportunity to engage patients early on, directly involve them in their own care, decrease waiting time, reduce costs, diminish potential errors and eliminate outdated information.

By observing pain points during the intake process, the UX team embraced the goal of placing the patient back at the center of care by leveraging advances in technology to help drive change. Modernizing Medicine’s patient kiosk was developed by using an agile User-Centered Design (UCD) process to rapidly test, iterate and code. The user interface uses large fonts and focused information that provide accessibility to users of all ages and skill levels to accurately populate and validate their medical data. We used a linear navigation design to guide users step-by-step through each section of the process.

Since patients are able to tap through intuitive prompts on the iPad, they can easily update their personal, medical and pharmacy information rather than filling out dreaded paperwork. Kiosk eliminates the need for staff to input information and allows providers to establish relationships with their patients and gather deeper insight into their current state of health. Patient kiosk can benefit the patient, provider and practice. Patients feel empowered, providers have better patient insights and can provide better care, and practices can save time and money on inputting and updating paper forms.

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Congratulations to all of the winners!

Best Student UX

Savannah College of Art and Design: SPARK: An Autonomous Rehabilitation Platform, Most Comprehensive Platform for Health Recovery

SPARK: An Autonomous Rehabilitation Platform

Spark is an autonomous rehabilitation platform that allows users to engage and make healthy progress in their recovery journey anywhere.

Our team created this product during our class called “UX STUDIO 1” in Savannah College of Art and Design during the spring semester 2017 (March-June). We were a class consisted of juniors passionate about UX Design, and with a strong knowledge of the design and research process from classes taken previously. The students were split into groups of 5 to develop a product that will solve a problem with emerging technologies in 8 weeks.

Our team was an international group of 5 students from 5 different countries: South Korea, Argentina, USA, China, and India. Working within a pool of diverse cultures and perspectives was quite a challenge. We had our own ways of thinking, digesting and translating information. Although it was a rough start at first, we decided that there was no “perfect” way of doing anything. It wasn’t just a matter of listening to each other but also learning to communicate in a way that could help the listeners understand our ideas and what validated them.

Even though all of us were UX designers, for this project we needed other skill sets in order to bring our project alive. Luckily, each one of us had unique skills that complemented our project. We individually re-visited them (ex: 3D modeling+printing, motion media + video) and even learned new techniques such as motion capturing and visual effects rigging software to bring our product alive.

We were lucky to have access to different physical therapists as our main source of generating insights, as well as user testing in their area. Many of our design choices were altered after talking to the actual potential users, as well as the physical therapists. They gave us insights on little details to include such as resonant breathing and its importance, which is something we could have easily ignored in our process. Our team never stopped researching and testing. We were very persistent on making each feature purposeful and meaningful for our potential users.

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Student Honorable Mention

Seedly: Most Delightful Educational Experience for Kids

Seedly

Seedly is a wearable necklace for children that motivates them to continually grow and plant seeds every two weeks.

By 2050, the current food infrastructure will not be able to support the exponentially increasing population. Nevertheless, younger generations are not properly educated on how to sustainably grow to produce for themselves. Especially for children, plants lack the basics of usability such as feedforward and feedback. For the purpose of improving plant usability and pleasure provided in the interaction with plants, we imagined a plant that would emotionally communicate with children when it is thirsty, cold or in need of more sunlight.

Seedly is a wearable necklace for children that helps educate them on how to grow food for themselves. Seedly includes light, water, and temperature sensors, as well as a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) module that communicates with the device and tells the child what it needs through the mobile app. The app allows the child to name the seed they are growing and create a personal relationship with it. As it grows, the device communicates when the plant needs water and sunlight, making it fun and engaging for the kid to care for the plant throughout the day. The planted seed is displayed on a map for the child to tend to, as well as discover other children’s plants nearby.

Plants grown from Seedly will never stop living from lack of love or attention, and children will grow up as individuals who care for and appreciate nature.

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Student Honorable Mention

LogistiX, Best Tool for Ground Transportation Driver Planning

LogistiX

Agile package delivery for the 21st century.

The logistics and transportation industry is vital to our global economy. Unfortunately, according to marketplace.org, 10% of shipped packages are not delivered on time. In the case of UPS, the main reason for delayed deliveries is outdated technology. The LogistiX experience offers a speedy and human-centered delivery process that utilizes 21st-century technology. Created using the double diamond process, LogistiX is designed for delivery men and women ages 18-65.

After researching UPS and affinitising, it became clear the DIAD needed to be more user-friendly. After UPS declined an interview, I asked Judy Edge—VP of FedEx—about why FedEx hasn’t upgraded to the latest handheld computer. With certain longing, Judy explained: “We are working towards using the most up to date technology, but, it is like building a new boat while you are sailing in the boat.” That said, the biggest challenge is working with the original technology. This challenge inspired the following additions: pre-shift stretching, visual routing, and simple communication. User testing prompted the addition of smart buttons. These buttons detect the two most common commands for users and maps them to buttons on either side of the DIAD for easy access.

In redesigning the DIAD I took the role of not just an artist, but a strategic designer. I focused on changes that would maximize driver efficiency. The current DIAD is purely functional and aims only to instruct the driver and service the customer. The future of UX does not include this old-fashioned belief. For the package delivery industry, the UX mindset demands integrating the driver’s and customer’s needs and redefining their interaction. LogistiX delivers an exceptional user experience by placing equal value on the driver and the customer. The DIAD is an extension of the driver’s hand and can be used without touching the screen. LogistiX features smart buttons”

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JUDGES

ALAN COOPER

Alan Cooper co-founded Cooper in 1992. He is widely known for his role in humanizing technology through his groundbreaking work in software design. He is also the author of the books About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design (editions 1-4) and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Widely recognized as the “Father of Visual Basic,” Alan also created the goal-directed design methodology and invented personas as practical interaction design tools to create high-tech products that delight users’ sensibilities.

“The future,” Alan reminds us, “is right in front of us, unobscured by anything other than our inability to recognize it.”

GRACE HWANG

As the VP of Design and Experience at digital health start-up, Carrot Sense, Grace is combining technology and behavioral science to help people stop smoking. Grace has spent over two decades helping start-ups, non-profits, Fortune 500 companies, and the public sector use design for bettering lives and growing business. Prior to Carrot Sense, Grace spent 12 years at the global innovation consultancy IDEO, most recently as the Executive Director of Health. There, she led multi-disciplinary teams to craft physical and digital experiences, products, services, and brands in the Health, Food and Beverage, Consumer Electronics, Retail, and Aerospace industries. This included significant work with Planned Parenthood, recognized by Fast Company with the 2016 Innovation By Design award in Health.

Grace graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Product Design and Mechanical Engineering. She teaches a course in Stanford’s School of Medicine focused on creating presence between clinicians and patients, and re-thinking the human experience in medicine.

ITAI VONSHAK

Over his 20-year career, Itai has been a forward-thinking expert in design focused on bridging the gaps between design, engineering and business. Itai serves as the General Manager and Vice President of the Wearables Business Unit at Intel. Previously, he worked as Head of Product at Pebble and as the VP of Product and Design of webOS at HP\Palm (acquired by LG Electronics) to deliver webOS TV. Itai was also the co-founder of elements, a UX design and strategy firm focused on consumer products.

Itai holds a BA in Computer Science from The Academic College of Tel-Aviv, Yaffo.

JENNY LAM

She was previously co-founder of Jackson Fish Market, a small software startup having shipped dozens of software products in addition to partnering with small and large clients. Before Jackson Fish Market, Jenny worked at Microsoft from 2001–2007 as Creative Director of the Windows User Experience team shipping two versions of the Windows OS and 2 versions of MSN Explorer.

Jenny has served on the national board of directors for the AIGA and mentors national & local organizations like TechStars and Startup Weekend to foster the next generation of creative design talent headed for the tech industry. She was named one of the Top 100 Most Influential Women in Technology by the Puget Sound Business Journal and was honored on the 40 under 40 list of Seattle Business Leaders.

Jenny attended the University of Florida to study Advertising and the Portfolio Center for Design.

KELLY CLARK

Kelly is a seasoned creative leader with over 20 years of experience in user-centered design and brand experience. She leads the New York studio’s interaction design discipline to develop impactful and engaging digital products. Kelly has expertise in financial services, technology, retail, media and education. She has worked with a variety of clients, including Apple, Bank of America, Capital One, Discovery Channel, HP, Intel, Oracle and Williams-Sonoma.

Prior to joining Smart, Kelly served as VP of Design at Originate and ran her own award-winning digital design studio in San Francisco. She is a member of IxDA and AIGA, as well as UX mentorship programs. Her work has won numerous awards, including SxSW and Webby Award nominations, One Show Awards finalist, W3 Silver Award, WebAward Standard of Excellence, Forbes Best of the Web and others.

Kelly received her BFA in Graphic Design from California State University, Fullerton

NICK FOSTER

Nick Foster is Head of Industrial Design at X (formerly Google X), and is a partner at the Near Future Laboratory, pioneering work in the field of Design Fiction embracing the future with all it’s wrinkles and bumps. He has been a designer and futurist for 20 years and has worked in advanced design roles for Sony, Nokia, Dyson amongst others. Nick is a co-author of “TBD Catalog: The Near Future’s Normal Ordinary Everyday”. His work has been published in the Alpine Review, Core77, Blueprint, BoingBoing, Wired and Stylus.

Nick holds a BSC in Product Design from the Brunel University London and an MA in Design Products from Royal College of Art.

SKYE LEE

Founder Stealth7, Advisor Pear VC + Former Head of UX at FB/OculusVR

Skye Lee is currently the Chief Design Consultant at Stealth7, which fittingly enough is currently in stealth mode. Before that Skye brought her UX design and product leadership to Oculus VR, where she led a team of world-class specialists in visual design, interaction design, audio design, Unity prototyping, user research and content strategy to sculpt new products and features.

Previously, she served as portfolio director and lead at IDEO, where she helped design the new digital voting machine for Los Angeles County. Before that, Skye has worked at some of the most successful companies in Silicon Valley such as Facebook, Netflix and PayPal to name a few. She also works with seed VCs as an advisor, executive coach and angel. In all of these roles, Skye’s overarching goal has been to help steer things towards the light side of the force, and be a change agent for good.

THOMAS MARZANO

Global Head of Brand Experience at Philips, Blogger

As an all-round creative Thomas’ goal has always been to create memorable experiences through imagination and design. He firmly believes that putting people at the center of the imagination is the only sustainable way to create a meaningful experience for people and achieve long-term business relevance. During his 20 years as a professional creative, Thomas has developed many skills and gained a wide experience in different creative disciplines such as user experience, interaction design, product & service design, strategic & innovation design, communication, brand design and digital.

At Philips, Thomas has contributed to some of the award-winning strategic projects such as Living Memory, La Casa Prossima Futura, and Next Simplicity. The last few years he has been driving the design strategy of the global digital presence of Philips and most recently directed the refresh of the Philips Brand which was launched in 2013.

Moderator & Host

BEVERLY MAY

Beverly is the Executive Director of the UX Awards. She has 2 decades of experience in tech, product development and UX and has helped define and launch hundreds of new tech initiatives at agencies, publishers, startups, and in Peacekeeping at the UN. Beverly is faculty in Digital Analytics and Product Design at Columbia University and also teaches at U.C. Berkeley and General Assembly; is Senior Digital Specialist for the State of CA Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development; and has led The Concepts Lab theconceptslab.com and her own UX & product strategy consultancy, Oxford Tech since 2008, with a jaunt to Europe in 2015 as CTO & Head of Product at a social video mixing company in Berlin, Germany.

Beverly has an Executive MBA from the University of Oxford, a Master’s degree from NYU’s ITP Program, and a BA from University of Toronto. She is a triple EU- Canadian- US citizen and a regular educator and public speaker on UX, product management and analytics.

GUEST SPEAKERS

All guest speakers have directly supported or been involved in the 2017 UX Awards, either as winners, judges, advisory board members or supporters.

ADAM GLAZIER

Google Daydream UX Lead, Chromecast, IDEO, UX Awards Finalist

Adam Glazier leads UX and sound design across AR/VR projects at Google. While at Google, Adam has been the lead UX designer on Google Earth VR, Street View VR and other Daydream apps and system projects. Adam also helped bring Chromecast from conception to launch. Prior to Google, Adam was at IDEO designing products, services and sounds.

Throughout Adam’s career, he designed/directed sound and music with a UX lens for all of products he’s lead.
After hours, Adam is a passionate composer of experimental music.

ALESHA UNPINGCO

Alesha Unpingco is a VR/AR UX designer working on Google Daydream’s VR and AR Publishing team. Prior to Daydream, she designed interactive experiences for various Google Ads & Commerce tools, Honda, Acura, Intuit, startups, nonprofits, and higher education institutions. Finding innovative ways to use design and technology to mobilize communities, inspire education and empathy, and bring about positive social change has been the common thread in her experiences.

As a virtual reality prototyper, immersive design enthusiast, and Cardboard Expeditions Ambassador, Alesha continues to embrace her curious nature, love for limitless learning, and passion for using virtual and augmented reality to elevate the way people learn, connect, and create with each other.

ALEX FAABORG

Design Lead, Daydream Ecosystem, Google, UX Awards Finalist

Alex Faaborg is the design lead for Google Daydream’s VR and AR Publishing team. He has led the design of Android Wear, Google Now, and the Android System UI for KitKat. Prior to joining Google, Alex served at Mozilla as the principal designer on Firefox for five years. Alex has a masters degree from the MIT Media Lab where he researched artificial intelligence, intelligent agents, and context aware computing. Alex’s interactive design work is based on fundamentals of human cognition and perception, from his background in Cognitive Science and Information Science at Cornell University.

ANDRE LE

Andre Le currently leads UX on Google Earth VR, an award-winning immersive VR exploration application that allows people to experience the world from impossible perspectives. Andre has spent the last 6 years designing for immersive technologies—having worked extensively on an AR/mobile platform that brought real-time collaboration to industrial field workers as well as consumer AR applications that allowed people to replay their memories embedded in photos.

Andre holds a BS in Graphic Design from AICASD and a Masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University. His multidisciplinary background allows him to lead, research, design, and prototype for emerging technologies and cross-functional teams.

ANDREW ZANONI

Student at Savannah College of Art and Design, UX Awards Finalist

Andrew is a senior from Carol Stream, IL, pursuing degrees in both Industrial Design and Service Design. His passion for designing and building products began as a young boy designing cars for the future. It was only natural for Andrew to take his talents to the Savannah College of Art and Design to polish his skills. There, you will find him leading team projects that have become the standard the other students should follow. He leads by example and skill from both the design of a project to the building of the final product. Andrew recently lead a team that won the school’s Foam Core competition.

Finally, Andrew is a passionate designer who strives to learn new skills and methodologies to help him be even better at his craft. Outside of school, you will find Andrew’s design and user experience mind working to improve the customer experience at his part-time jobs.

BRIAN BRAUNLICH

Product Manager at Springshot, UX Awards Finalist

Brian Braunlich has been a Product Manager for three years. At Springshot, he works with design and engineering to develop tools for blue-collar workers in the airline industry, with a goal of increasing efficiency and employee happiness. Prior to working at Springshot, he was the lead Product Manager at VigLink, focusing on increasing ad revenue for online content creators.

Brian holds a Bachelor of Arts Field Of Study Cinematic Arts from the University of Southern California.

BUSRA DEMIRCI

Senior UX Designer at Modernizing Medicine, UX Awards Finalist

Busra Demirci is a Senior UX Designer at Modernizing Medicine with over seven years of experience in the areas of User Experience Design, Information Architecture and Visual Design. Through her diverse experience, she has conducted user testing sessions with hundreds of users and gained in-depth knowledge of human computer interaction principles.

Busra currently focuses her work on leading Modernizing Medicine’s Mobile UX, Patient Engagement, EHR system and strategic initiatives. She has her degree in Computer Science, Marketing and Management Information Systems from Florida Atlantic University, in addition to multiple UX certifications such as Human-Computer Interaction and UI Animation. Busra is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Interaction Design and Information Architecture at the University of Baltimore.

CAROLYN CHANDLER

Carolyn Chandler has been working in the field of User Experience Design for over 20 years, as an interaction designer, strategist, practice director, and educator. She co-authored “A Project Guide to UX Design” with Russ Unger and “Adventures in Experience Design” with Anna van Slee – an activity-oriented book uses games and short, playful lessons to take beginners through the experience design process. She has defined UX and UI related curricula for DePaul University, Northwestern University, DeVry University, The Starter League, Ascend Training, and experimental programs within high schools in Chicago. At Eight Bit Studios, Carolyn uses her background in Anthropology and experience in digital design to dive deep into complex problems and facilitate the crafting of powerful and elegant solutions.

CHRISTIAN ERVIN

Design Director of Tellart, UX Awards Finalist

Christian Ervin is Design Director of Tellart, and is based here in the company’s Berkeley office. At Tellart, Christian works alongside architects, filmmakers, software developers, industrial designers, strategists, graphic designers and fabricators to imagine, prototype and develop early-stage prototypes and experiences of transformative future products and services. As Design Director, Christian guides the work of multidisciplinary teams crafting experiences that deftly bridge the physical and the virtual across screens, products and spaces. Tellart’s work has been featured in international publications and received numerous awards, including notably the 2016 National Design Award in Interaction Design from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Christian holds a MDes in Technology from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a BArch from Rice University School of Architecture.

CODY REPPERT

Project Manager and UX Designer for UBER Elevate collaboration with Savannah College of Art and Design, UX Awards Finalist

Cody is pursuing a degree in UX Design at Savannah College of Art and Design. SCAD was the first university in the United States to offer a B.F.A. in UX Design and it has the added benefit of having Google help with the curriculum. Over the summer he interned with Intuit as an interaction designer where he learned about internet security. His projects and club involvement (UX Club & Colleges Against Cancer) have fostered leadership and determination. Cody is a strong future thinker with a drive to change the world. He values problem-solving and helping others, which UX allows him to do. Cody also has a strong knowledge of futuristic technologies that he applies to all his projects.

Outside of work, Cody is an avid photographer and runs a side business for portraits and lifestyle photography.

DANIEL STERNFELD

Dan Sternfeld is a software engineer on Google’s Daydream team who is passionate about the intersection of design and technology. Throughout his time at Google, he has worked on enabling creators to construct quality VR and AR experiences by building development tools and exploring solutions to new design challenges that come along with new technology.

Prior to Google, Dan developed multiple games at Zynga where he received the “Innovator” award. Before that, he earned a BSA in Game Design & Development from Rochester Institute of Technology.

FIONA MURPHY

Co-Founder and Director of Frontend.com, UX Awards Finalist

Fiona Murphy is a co-founder and Director of Frontend.com, a leading international UX design consultancy based in Dublin, Ireland. Founded in 1998, Frontend.com was one of the first UX design firms in Europe and over the last two decades she has worked for some of the world’s top brands. Her vast experience ranges from delivering UX solutions for finance & banking systems, pharma to FMCG consumer websites. Fiona co-founded Frontend.com because she believed there was a real need to provide design and innovations that work for end users and has spent at least 20 years advocating this.

More recently, Fiona has been heavily involved in a philanthropic project examining how UX design can help in the provision of healthcare to displaced people caught up in the current European migrant crisis. Fiona is a multi-award winning designer, having picked up accolades all over the world – including the Grand Prix at the 2015 IxDA Awards on her last visit to San Francisco.

HWANGHAH JEONG

UX Design Intern at Microsoft, Student at Savannah College of Art and Design, UX Awards Finalist

Hwanghah is a student from South Korea, pursuing a degree in UX Design and Graphic Design. Through moving around different countries in her life, she’s gained unique perspectives on cultures and people. She is a curious learner, and always willing to take tackle new opportunities, even when it’s beyond her comfort zone. She is currently interning at Microsoft and is excited to see how artificial intelligence will shape people’s lives in the future.

JAE PARK

Executive Creative Director for the Amazon Devices and Service Group, UX Awards Finalist

Jae Park is the Executive Creative Director for the Amazon Devices and Service group. Since 2012, Jae has led a team of over 50 UX professionals focused on innovating and delivering the overall UX for all Amazon devices including Fire Tablet, Fire TV, and Alexa devices such as Echo Show and Echo Spot. Prior to joining Amazon, Jae worked at Microsoft and was one of the design leaders who created Windows Phone UX and Metro design. In his other life, Jae has also worked at startups leading UX for a web-based investment bank system and designing augmented reality headsets. Jae received his BFA in Industrial Design from RISD in 1994.

JAMES SIMMONS

Student at Savannah College of Art and Design, UX Awards Finalist

James is a small town Kansas native with global aspiration. His passion for laughter and individualism led him to the design community where he is driven by the possibility technology presents in improving the human condition.

JONATHAN JUDAL

As a User Experience Designer with SAP’s Design and Co-Innovation Center, Jonathan Judal works directly with customers to transform their user experience. His project experiences include redesigning a city’s neighborhood development portal, improving a company’s revenue forecasting process, and simplifying the way stats are consumed on nhl.com/stats. Prior to SAP, Jonathan received his BFA in Graphic Design at San José State University.

KAREN CHENG

Professor of Visual Communication Design at the University of Washington, UX Awards Finalist

Karen Cheng is a professor of Visual Communication Design at the University of Washington, where she teaches information design and data visualization. Her research and practice focuses on making complex information both more understandable and more compelling in a wide variety of contexts—for example, making recycling/composting easier (and more pleasurable) for users.

Karen has an M.Design from the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning; she has a BS in Chemical Engineering from Penn State University. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Washington, she worked in Brand Management at the Procter & Gamble Company.

KENT EISENHUTH

Kent has been working in the field of UX design for nearly ten years. During that time, Kent has led project teams in adopting user-centered design methods to solve complex business and consumer problems. He specializes in user interface design, interaction design, and data visualization. His work has appeared in many publications, including Fast Company and UXmatters. He also has ties to the academic community in Philadelphia. He currently teaches an interaction design class at the University of Pennsylvania. Finally, he has had the privilege of presenting at international conferences such as IxDA’s Interaction, and he is a frequent guest lecturer at the universities in the greater Philadelphia area.

KEVIN RICHARDSON

Director of User Experience of Infragistics, Former Director of Research of Electronic Ink,
UX Awards Finalist

Kevin has been working as a user experience professional for more than 25 years. With a PhD in Cognitive Psychology, he has researched, evaluated, designed, mentored and managed teams as they create innovative, user-centered solutions to complex business problems. Kevin’s experience crosses business verticals focusing on enterprise software and custom business applications. As an advocate for the practical application of UX Design, Kevin is a manager, hands-on practitioner, author and speaker.

KRISTINE MATTHEWS

Kristine Matthews is a leader in the sustainable design of communication in the environment, including exhibitions, installations, wayfinding and environmental graphics and interpretation. She established Studio Matthews in 2008 and is the former co-director of thomas.matthews, the award-winning studio she co-founded in 1998 and led until 2008 in London, England.

Matthews is also Associate Professor of Design and Chair of the Visual Communication Design program at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dovetailing professional practice with education, her advanced Exhibition and Installation Design course creates cutting-edge design in the environment with a focus on audience engagement and sustainability. Her work has been published around the world.

MATT GLIBBERY

Matt leads design engagements for SAP’s Design & Co-Innovation Center with some of the world’s most successful brands. He works at every level of the business; from crafting future customer experiences with C-level executives, to developing holistic, human-centered design solutions with fork-lift operators. He uses photography throughout his work to humanize end users, build empathy for their needs & create buy-in for the design process. Prior to SAP, Matt was the Chief Design Officer for a cooking start up. Matt learned human-centered design through Northwestern’s Engineering Design & Innovation program, where projects took him from suburban laundry rooms to rural India.

MEGAN RICHARDS

Executive UX Producer for Alexa Devices at Amazon, UX Awards Finalist

Megan is the Executive UX Producer for Alexa multimodal devices at Amazon. In this role, Megan leads a team of producers partnering with UX, engineering, and product management to deliver ground breaking UX solutions for Alexa devices including Echo Show and Echo Spot. Since joining Amazon in 2007, Megan has developed UX for new advertising programs on Amazon.com, Kindle, and Fire tablets and also led digital and social media advertising for Amazon devices. Megan received her Bachelor’s degree in Marketing in 1995.

MICHAEL MELNICK

VP, User Experience, Klick, Inc., UX Awards Finalist

Michael has been with Klick Health for over 12 years and was a key component in the founding of the User Experience Design (UX) practice at Klick, which he now leads.

Michael has had the opportunity to lead user experience design work directly with clients such as Sony, Johnson & Johnson, Biogen-Idec, American Medical Association, Novartis, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Takeda, among others. His breadth of experience spans web, application, mobile app and responsive website deliveries in addition to having a deep focus on DSA design. Michael is constantly striving to design elegant solutions to balance the needs of both clients and their customers through thoughtful and empathetic approaches.

Michael continues to drive innovation and provide leadership within the stellar UX Design team at Klick.

NADAV ASHKENAZI

Google Earth VR Software Engineer, UX Awards Finalist

Nadav Ashkenazi is an engineer on ‘Google Earth VR’, where he worked on key features of Earth VR including search and the first-run experience. Prior to Google, Nadav completed his education in Informatics at the University of Washington, where he studied computer science and human-computer interaction.

NATHAN KENDRICK

Co-founder and Partner at DesignMap, UX Awards Finalist

Nathan Kendrick, Co-founder and Partner at DesignMap, provides the real driving passion for our team. He has a deep love of the craft of design and fervor for doing the right thing, no matter what it takes.

Nathan trained with Paul Kahn and Krzysztof Lenk, leaders of the information architecture discipline. He has 20 years of web-based application design experience, starting at a small design studio then moving on to the design team at Netscape. He was a lead designer for web services at Eazel, a startup founded by the Apple engineers responsible for the original Macintosh user interface. He also consulted at Loudcloud (later Opsware) where he helped
create interaction design standards for this industry-leading, web-based monitoring and code change management system.

Leading DesignMap, he is compelled to hire and develop incredible designers who are capable of raising the bar at any client they find themselves.

PERTTU PÖLÖNEN

Perttu Pölönen is a walking example of an interdisciplinary person. A musician who turned into an entrepreneur, a composer turned into an inventor. Creativity, technology, education and disruption are things Perttu is passionate about. As a 15-year-old music student Perttu got so frustrated with the complex music theory that he wanted to re-invent it. He created MusiClock, a teaching aid including both hardware and software products, to disrupt the centuries old way of teaching music. The invention has won multiple awards, including EUCYS, the biggest invention competition in Europe.

Perttu has graduated from Singularity University (2016), one of the most prestigious institutions in the world focused on leveraging exponential technologies to solve world’s most pressing problems. The Global Solutions Program (GSP) gathers future leaders, entrepreneurs, and technologists around the world to work on team-based technology solutions to widespread global challenges. It is located at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley and sponsored by Google.

PHIL BALAGTAS

Phil has been a Visual & UX Designer since 2001 and has experience designing across a variety of devices and platforms within non-profit, retail, advertising, and enterprise software organizations. He is currently a Design Director for GE Aviation Digital Solutions working with airlines to use big data to improve operational & fuel efficiency. An educator and futurist, he also organizes and leads design skill programs and is the founder of Speculative Futures and the PRIMER conference which focuses on cultural and social impact of design for the future.

RICH MAINS

Creative Director for Alexa Devices at Amazon, UX Awards Finalist

Rich Mains is the Creative Director for Alexa multimodal devices at Amazon, most recently leading UX, visual, and motion design for Echo Show and Echo Spot. Prior to Amazon, Rich worked at Microsoft where he designed UX for a range of products including Xbox, Zune, and Bing. Earlier in his career, Rich was at R/GA where he helped shape digital experiences for numerous Fortune 500 firms including IBM, Verizon, Nike and others.

RICHARD BAKER

Currently leading the user experience team within GE Transportation, creating a user-centered culture and growing design thinking within the organization.
Richard Baker has been in the UX industry for over 15 years, with experience ranging from non-profit, international sports, mobile, government, and digital-industrial. His team built an award-winning UX team for GE Transportation in just 18 months. Now he is teaching a 100-year-old industrial company how to fuse business strategy and design thinking to drive innovation

Ryan has 15 years of experience as an Olympian & World Champion gold, silver and bronze medalist representing Fortune 500 companies, serial entrepreneurship, digital product management, UX design strategy and innovation for a Fortune 10 company, pro-bono work for a global non-profit and continuous learning through new experiences.

For inspiration, Ryan has traveled to over 30 countries and over 35 states, studying new cultures and synthesizing how innovation influences and enhances a user’s experience. Ryan believes that taking one out of a familiar environment provides insight and perspective that is crucial to ideation and creativity.

Ryan enjoys time with friends and family, golf, tennis and pretty much any adventure that involves nature at it’s finest.

SALLY LAWLER KENNEDY

Sally is a design thinker and creative problem solver working in the User Experience field. She started her career studying and practicing mechanical engineering and later moved into nursing. Along the way, she fell in love with user experience design because it brings together her background in engineering and nursing. Sally’s team is responsible for delivering amazing and unforgettable customer experiences which contribute to the growth of SAP. Sally has led numerous SAP customers in their transformation into design-led organizations. It was at SAP where she was trained and immersed in design thinking methodologies. Sally has taught and led Design Thinking workshops for some of the largest global companies, in a variety of industries from consumer products, to automotive, to oil and gas, to retail.

Sally is energized when faced with a challenge or problem to solve. She is passionate about helping companies create a design-led culture, and people discover their creative abilities.

SAM YEN

Sam is Chief Design Officer at SAP, where he has overseen major initiatives including SAP Fiori, SAP Screen Personas and SAP ́s UX design services. Under his stewardship, SAP has won over 20 design awards, including multiple UX Awards and Red Dot awards. In 2015, Sam also became Managing Director of SAP Labs in Silicon Valley.

Sam is also an Associate Consulting Professor at the Stanford d.school where he co-teaches courses helping large organizations scale creativity and innovation in their organizations using design thinking and an advisor to the Innovative Technology Leaders program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB).

Before joining SAP, Sam was co-founder of Covigna, Inc., an enterprise software company that delivered project management solutions. At Covigna, he led design, engineering, and strategic customer engagement.

Sam has a Ph.D. in Design Theory and Methodology from Stanford University.

SCOTT MCDONALD

Scott is an Inc. 5000 entrepreneur and co-founder of New York-based digital innovation and UX consultancy Modus. Prior to founding Modus, Scott was a strategist with the New York office of Scient Corporation and creative supervisor at Young & Rubicam’s Brand Dialogue interactive group.

An expert in customer-centered business innovation, he has led high-profile strategic initiatives for Morgan Stanley & Co., SIRIUS Satellite Radio, Sony Electronics, Comcast Corporation, InterActiveCorp, Major League Baseball, Cleveland Clinic and other leading brands.

Scott is a member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, the Digital Analytics Association and the User Experience Professionals Association. He is a co-founder of the Digital Analytics Association’s New York City chapter and serves on the board of advisors of two Internet start-ups.

SEAN O’CONNOR

Partner at Smart Design, UX Awards Finalist

Sean champions the power of design to solve real-world challenges for Smart Design’s clients. He’s been a leading authority on using brand strategy and technology to transform consumer experiences, bringing to market dozens of integrated products and platforms over the last decade. A whiz at helping companies of all sizes grow their in-house design capability, over his twenty-year career Sean has globe trotted from San Francisco to Barcelona and many points in between. He is a frequent contributor to Brandweek and Fast Company on design, healthcare innovation and marketing.

TALIN WADSWORTH

Lead Product Designer Adobe + Former Senior Designer Volume

Talin Wadsworth is the lead product designer for Adobe XD, a new design tool for UX/UI and mobile app design. Adobe is a winner of a 2012 UX Award and is a premier supporter of the upcoming 2017 UX Awards. As a designer at Adobe, Talin has led many 1.0 product initiatives, including the launch of Creative Cloud and Adobe Sketch for the iPad, with over five years’ experience at Adobe. Talin has a BFA from California College of the Arts. You can find him online @mrtalin on Twitter and Instagram.

TAN MA

UX/UI Designer, UX Awards Finalist

Tan has been a UX/UI Designer since 2012. At Springshot, she leads the design of complex web products and mobile apps. She focuses on helping users solve the problems and create a better experience for them to complete their job. Prior to Springshot, Tan worked in Adsnative, Samsung, Harman Kardon etc. Her projects include a music player app, a chatting app, a mobile and TV multiscreen game, and data visualization.

Tan graduated from NYU and she is a technology enthusiast. She loves pushing the envelope and utilizing technology in new visual ways.

TODD LEFELT

Todd Lefelt is Managing Director of User Experience at Huge in Los Angeles. Since joining Huge in 2006, Todd has been instrumental in building the agency’s user experience team and helping to define the philosophy and process applied to user-centric design. In 2010, Todd joined Huge’s Los Angeles office, where he has played a key role in the development of the company’s West Coast presence. Todd has directed interactive design and research for some of Huge’s largest engagements and has worked with clients including Clear Channel, National Geographic, NBC Universal, Samsung, Toyota and Warner Music Group. With nearly two decades of industry experience, Todd held senior positions at a number of other companies prior to joining Huge, including Time Inc. Interactive, Ecos Technologies, Pathways Flandrau Science Center, Wave Technologies, Kozmo.com, R/GA and Ultra 16.

Todd received a BFA from the University of Michigan and an MA from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. He currently lives in Silver Lake with his wife Holly, son Ira, and cat Pippa.

TOM NELSON

Senior UX Designer for Alexa Devices at Amazon, UX Awards Finalist

Tom is a Senior UX Designer for Alexa multimodal devices at Amazon. Tom joined Amazon in 2013 and spent two years as the lead designer for Kindle eReaders. Since 2015, Tom has been focused on developing and evangelizing new interaction patterns for Echo Show, Echo Spot, and other Alexa products. Tom studied Mass Communication at the University of Utah and Interaction Design at the University of Queensland.

VALTTERI MÄKI

UX Designer at Taiste, UX Awards Finalist

Valtteri has made a long career specialising in UX, 3D graphics and animation.
He is also the responsible for the UI and UX design of Musiclock, a game-changing app that seeks to change the way music theory is traditionally taught.

VILLE KAISLA

Design Director & Partner at Taiste, UX Awards Finalist

A Design Director at the mobile-driven design & development agency Taiste, Ville is a versatile designer and entrepreneur with a decade of experience in designing a wide array of digital products – especially for mobile environments. In his work, Ville is inspired by constant change, fresh views and simplicity.

WILLIAM J. ZHOU

Co-Founder and CEO of EvoEco, UX Awards Finalist

William Zhou is the Co-Founder and CEO of EvoEco, a technology company that provides sustainable solutions for enterprises. EvoEco has made Smart Bins commercially available in North America, and is the Smart Bins hardware and software supplier for Starbucks, Pinterest, ABM, Columbia Property Trust, and the University of Washington, among others.

2017 EVENT SCHEDULE

FREE ADD-ON WORKSHOP | 10:00AM-1:00PM

· Workshop: Innovation by Design – An Interactive Workshop to Transform your Organization This workshop is free for the first 40 attendees who register for it. Information will be shared about registering for the workshop after ticket purchase. READ MORE ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

VIP DINNER | 7:00PM-9:00PM

THE SUMMIT: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2017

MAIN CONFERENCE REGISTRATION OPENS | 8:30AM

40 DAYTIME TALKS | 9:00AM – 6:00PM

· 15 minute fast-paced talks and QA sessions from the 8 expert judges, advisory board members, 21 finalist winners and invited special guests. This is an intensive knowledge-share and learning opportunity from the most senior UX professionals in the industry

EVENING PROJECTS SHOWCASE AND DISCUSSION | 7:15PM – 9:45PM

· See the winning projects in full! Watch 3-minute video overviews of all 21 winning projects: Grand, Gold, Silver, Bronze, Honorable, People’s Choice, Top Rated, Most Popular and Student

· Hear from each of the judges on how they evaluated the submissions

· Meet the winners and hear the Grand and Gold winners talk about their projects

CLOSING CELEBRATION | 9:45PM – 10:30PM

Gold Sponsors

SAP

Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, with locations in more than 130 countries, SAP AG is the world leader in enterprise software and software-related services. Explore our 42 year history of innovation and access late breaking company news, financial and investor information, career opportunities, and more.

Silver Sponsors

General Assembly

At General Assembly, we are creating a global community of individuals empowered to pursue work they love, by offering full-time immersive programs, long-form courses, and classes and workshops on the most relevant skills of the 21st century – from web development and user experience design, to business fundamentals, to data science, to product management and digital marketing.

Bronze Sponsors

Attck

Primer

PRIMER shines a spotlight on the critical topics of a likely and possible future that demand a design response now. It aims to inspire thinkers and makers to use futures design thinking as a method to develop new agendas for communities, businesses, and governments to strategize and align themselves economically and sustainably for the future as it arrives.

WeWork

Community Sponsors

Loop 11

Loop11 is the only way to get quantitative usability metrics…affordably. It’s the SurveyMonkey of usability testing. A self-serve, browser-based solution for usability professionals, web managers and web designers to create their own online, usability testing projects to get the metrics needed to optimize website usability.

Regional Partners & Supporters

ACM NY

ACM NY is a non-profit professional group that meets regularly to discuss diverse topics in computer science such as user experience, user research, data visualization, predictive analytics, applied machine learning, statistical modeling, open data, and artificial neural networks. Meeting topics are varied and range from tutorials on basic concepts and their applications, to success stories from local practitioners and academic students, to discussions of tools, new technologies, and best practices. All are welcome to attend, to meet others, and to present their work.

Balsamiq

Balsamiq is the maker of the industry-leading rapid wireframing software that combines the simplicity of paper sketching with the power of a digital tool so that teams can focus on what’s important. Balsamiq is a small and personable company that competes on usability and customer service. Balsamiq believes work should be fun, and that life is too short for bad software.

User Experience Center at Bentley University

Our affiliation with the master’s program in Human Factors in Information Design provides the center with unique access to internationally-recognized experts and the latest research in the fields of user experience, design, human factors, usability, marketing, and business. Our affiliation with the Graduate School of Business keeps us focused on achieving the business goals of our clients.
Located on the beautiful Bentley University campus, the UXC is less than 30 minutes from downtown Boston.

Code For America

We are a network of people making government work for the people, by the people, in the 21st century. How do we get there? Government services that are simple, effective, and easy to use, working at scale to build healthy, prosperous, and safe communities.

Columbia SPS

Columbia University’s Master of Science in Information and Knowledge Strategy (IKNS) is for individuals who are invested in the strategic potential of information management and collaboration. Graduates go on to become knowledge and analytics leaders, consultants, and entrepreneurs of digital products.

EVENTBROWSE

flupa

French-speaking association of professionals of the user experience. Flupa is a local chapter of the User Experience Professionals Association (UxPA) that supports researchers and professionals of the user experience and has more than 50 local chapters across the world.
Flupa brings together communities of professionals and researchers from engineering, humanities, marketing and design to share their practices and promote the user experience (UX).

Fresh2Design

We are a community of up-and-coming designers and developers passionate about improving our craft. We have a lot of fun together and always learn from each other. Our events include monthly happy hours, workshops on design, education events and more!

The Hired Guns

Human Factors International

Human Factors International (HFI) is the world’s largest company specializing in user experience (UX) design. Our focus is unique in helping clients develop mature and effective UX practices. We provide a complete and seamless suite of advisory, training, certification, methods, standards, and tools to help you institutionalize user (customer) centricity. Our design projects ensure an unbroken golden thread, from executive intent, through digital strategy and innovation, to structural and detailed design and validation, including metrics-based improvements. Beyond ensuring that users can efficiently use your offerings, we apply persuasive engineering methods to influence your customers to use digital channels, engage, and convert.

Interaction Design Foundation

IxDA Berlin

Since 2008 IxDA Berlin is gathering interaction designers and all interested friends and fellows to talk about the emerging questions of todays interactive design space. At our regular meetings we are happy to welcome well known international speakers as well as hosting discussions and talks by the protagonists of Berlin’s own fast growing Interaction Design community. With members coming from all corners of the industry we never leave out an opportunity to broaden our horizon beyond the established design topics.

IxDA NY

The IxDA New York City local group organizes monthly presentations and workshops for people interested in interaction design. Our events gather together a vibrant community of professionals who design interactive systems, services and products of all kinds: web, desktop, enterprise, mobile, consumer electronics, digitally-enhanced environments, and more.

IxDA San Francisco

IxDA San Francisco is the SF local group of the Interaction Design Association. The IxDA is a member-supported organization committed to serving the needs of the international interaction design community.

JustinMind

LA-UX Meetup

Los Angeles is home to one of the largest volunteer-run User Experience (UX) professional development organizations in the world. The Los Angeles User Experience Meetup has more than 3,000 members. Since the organization was founded on April 21, 2007 by Lynn Boyden, Chris Chandler, Craig Nakano and Weston Thompson, over 50 events have been held for User Experience Designers, Information Architects, Interaction Designers, UX Researchers, Usability Analysts and Engineers and others interested in UX-related topics.

Leading Design Conference

Learning from a community of design leaders
Leading Design is a conference for people leading design teams, overseeing design direction, or instilling a culture of design within their organizations. The conference features two days of stimulating talks followed by one day of interactive workshops.

NYU ITP Program

ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts whose mission is to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people’s lives. Perhaps the best way to describe us is as a Center for the Recently Possible.

Optimal Workshop

Pratt Institute

The mission of Pratt Institute is to educate artists and creative professionals to be responsible contributors to society. Pratt seeks to instill in all graduates aesthetic judgment, professional knowledge, collaborative skills, and technical expertise. With a firm grounding in the liberal arts and sciences, a Pratt education blends theory with creative application in preparing graduates to become leaders in their professions. Pratt enrolls a diverse group of highly talented and dedicated students, challenging them to achieve their full potential.

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a leading national research university and the state of New Jersey’s preeminent, comprehensive public institution of higher education. Established in 1766, the university is the eighth oldest higher education institution in the United States. Nearly 69,000 students and 22,000 full- and part-time faculty and staff learn, work, and serve the public at Rutgers locations across New Jersey and around the world.

Silicon Valley Designers

Society for Technical Communication San Francisco Chapter

The mission of the San Francisco chapter is to:
Promote the arts and sciences of technical communication in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Promote career development in the technical communication profession for our members, other colleagues, and students of technical communication.
Promote respect, increased public awareness, and appreciation of the technical communication profession.

Speculative Futures Meetup

UC Berkeley Extension

From a group of academic pioneers in 1868 to the Free Speech Movement in 1964, Berkeley is a place where the brightest minds from across the globe come together to explore, ask questions and improve the world.

UC Berkeley, School of Information

The UC Berkeley School of Information is committed to expanding access to information and improving its usability, reliability, and credibility while preserving security and privacy. The I School offers two professional master’s degrees and an academic doctoral degree. Our MIMS program trains leaders who work at the intersection between technology, information, and people. Our MIDS program trains data scientists to solve real-world problems using complex and unstructured data, in a high-touch virtual degree. Our Ph.D. program equips scholars to develop solutions and shape policies that influence how people seek, use, and share information.

Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, College of Engineering, UC Berkeley

The Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation is UC Berkeley’s interdisciplinary hub for learning and making at the intersection of design and technology. We see design and technological innovation as integrally linked: innovation opens possibilities and extends the reach of design, while design links new technologies with human experiences and ensures that innovation truly benefits people and communities. Bringing together technical depth, design methodology, and a focus on societal impact, we aim to educate students who understand both the under-the-hood details that make something work and the big-picture context that makes something matter.

At the Jacobs Institute, technological breakthroughs commingle with Berkeley’s deep academic strengths and consistent focus on social good, uniquely equipping students to tackle the pressing challenges of today and tomorrow. From our home in Berkeley’s College of Engineering, we extend broadly across campus, serving as a welcoming hub: here, engineers, artists, and makers of all kinds can gather and collaborate. In a space designed to mix students of different disciplines, expertise levels, and modes of engagement, we provide a range of opportunities for hands-on, team-based learning, from courses to independent tinkering and co-curricular offerings.

User Defenders

There are scores of inspirational UX Designers out there who are doing outstanding, innovative work and helping to shape the future in their struggle to solve important design problems while fighting for the user.
In our highly accelerating world of technology, wearables, and the connected life, there’s never been a better time to be a great UX Designer.
For those more recently diving in and gaining experience, it can be quite daunting to stay inspired and enlightened in this ever-changing/evolving landscape.
This podcast is aimed at highlighting those leading the way in their craft by diving deeper into who they are, and what makes them tick/successful, in order to inspire and equip those aspiring to do the same.

UserZoom

UserZoom enables UX agility for the modern enterprise
Our cloud-based solution gives customers the ability to scale their User Experience research, rapidly test usability, and measure their customer’s experience on web and mobile properties. We connect Enterprise businesses with their exact target market and empower them to conduct agile usability testing, collect real-world behavioral analytics and other UX related research. Thanks to our platform and services, our customers make more intelligent, data-driven product decisions.
With offices in 4 different countries, the company continues to grow and to develop new products and services, making UserZoom the #1 UX research solution in the market.

UX + Data Meetup

UX Mastery

UX Mastery is an online resource for aspiring user experience designers. Through our free articles, ebooks, in-person workshops, community projects, and a vibrant community of eager volunteers, we’ve helped thousands of people get started in UX and get better.

UXPA DC

The DC chapter of the User Experience Professionals’ Association is a highly active local community of individuals interested in usability, user experience design, interaction design, and their many related fields.

UXPA International

NYC UXPA

We seek to bring together professionals from the marketing, design, technology and research communities so that we may share our collective experiences and create a forum for learning and professional growth. We encourage you to join us at our monthly events, which are open to members and non-members.

UX Poland

The hub of disruption and digital transformation, where the future will be revealed. Watch the greatest minds in business face off against the chance to reveal the new dimension of business. Follow SMASH and stay current with visionary ideas, game-changing technologies, new business models and strategies for the future.